About Me

In writing the "About Me" portion of this blog I thought about the purpose of the blog - namely, preventing the growth of Socialism & stopping the Death Of Democracy in the American Republic & returning her to the "liberty to abundance" stage of our history. One word descriptions of people's philosophies or purposes are quite often inadequate. I feel that I am "liberal" meaning that I am broad minded, independent, generous, hospitable, & magnanimous. Under these terms "liberal" is a perfectly good word that has been corrupted over the years to mean the person is a left-winger or as Mark Levin more accurately wrote in his book "Liberty & Tyranny" a "statist" - someone looking for government or state control of society. I am certainly not that & have dedicated the blog to fighting this. I believe that I find what I am when I consider whether or not I am a "conservative" & specifically when I ask what is it that I am trying to conserve? It is the libertarian principles that America was founded upon & originally followed. That is the Return To Excellence that this blog is named for & is all about.

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Trump & A Third Party

"I cannot say.  I have to respect the person that, if it's not me, the person that wins.  If I do win, and I'm leading by quite a bit, that's what I want to do.  I can totally make that pledge. If I'm the nominee, I will pledge I will not run as an independent . . . We want to win, and we will win.  But I want to win as the Republican.  I want to run as the Republican nominee . . . I will not make the pledge at this time." – Donald Trump responding to the first question @ the August 6 Republican Primary debate on FNC when the moderator asked the candidates to raise their hands if they could not pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee & not run as an independent against that nominee.  Only Trump raised his hand.
 
click on graph to enlarge
 
The top-ten tier Republican Primary debate on FNC on Thursday started with a fireworks question designed to get rid of Donald Trump in short order – see above.
 
FNC got what they wanted out of the debate – 24 million total viewers (16% of the homes with a TV according to Nielsen) with 7.9 million being in the targeted key advertising demographic of 25 to 54 year olds.  This is the largest TV primary debate audience in history – the first Republican Primary debate in 2012 drew 3.2 million viewers (5% of homes with a TV).
 
But to put this all in perspective there are over 320 million people in America & the 20,000 seat Quicken Loans Arena was almost full for the event – good for a cable TV event but not so good for America or a Cavaliers home basketball game respectively.

The debaters were chosen based on the Real Clear Politics' average of five recent national polls, with Trump (24.3%) scoring higher than Bush (12.5%) & Walker (9.5%) combined; Kasich brought up the rear as #10 with 2.8%.

Two unscientific online polls found Trump the winner of the debate – Trump received 47% of Time magazine's 55,000 votes & more than half of over 360,000 votes favored Trump in a Drudge Report poll.  Establishment Republicans & a Luntz focus group right after the debate were no where near this positive – in fact they were downright negative regarding Trump.

The above NY Times graph shows the amount of airtime each candidate received.  The darker bars indicate responses that were longer than the 60 seconds allotted.

In the undercard FNC debate (with six million viewers) featuring candidates 11 through 17 Carly Fiorina received 82% of a FNC flash telephone survey conducted for about two hours after that debate.

Socialist candidate Bernie Sanders wondered why there was not one word about income inequality, climate change, Citizen's United, or student loans.  I wondered why there was not one question asking whether or not the candidates thought BO had deliberately tried to damage America & the citizenry's standard of living the past six & a half years or why there was so little, if any, mention of a system of pure, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism that will undo all the harm BO has purposely done to America.

But getting back to Trump & his possible third party run.  Trump knows he is not liked by the establishment Republican Party & really did not say anything during the debate that he hadn't said before. 

Friday morning, on MSNBC, Trump further explained his opening remark above – "If someone gets in that I like & if I'm treated with respect, I would not run as an independent.  But I want to leave the option open, just in case that doesn't happen."

Now there are plenty in this readership who did not vote for McCain or Romney for the same reason Trump is leaving his options open - Ron Paul made a similar remark in 2012 about not pledging his delegates to a nominee who he totally disagreed with.

So in fact what Trump is saying about possibly "leading by quite a bit" months from now is that he would reserve the right to run as a third party candidate if the GOP decided they did not want him in the party under any circumstances.  Trump is really saying that in that case the other Republican candidates should drop out – not him.

 

Posted by ReturnToExcellence.net at 11:22 PM

2 comments:

  1. JRAugust 9, 2015 at 12:10 AM

    Trump has it right - no time for pandering. It is why he has high ratings at this time - he gives all a road to end political correctness.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Economics501August 9, 2015 at 6:55 PM

    Doug – a question that you wished was raised, regarding role for unregulated laissez-faire capitalism, is essential if the GOP has any chance of winning the presidency in 2016. An increasing Dependency on Government (DG) class mandates that the GOP must motivate the DG to rely more on their own initiatives, skills, and dreams, unimpeded via excessive Gov regulation. Otherwise, many from the DG will continue to vote overwhelmingly for the Dems because the Dems promise more entitlements – taxing the upper income even more for more entitlements such as universal pre school, increasing minimum wage, mandating how companies pay overtime, etc … I hope this question will go first to Carly Fiorina – as she partially addressed today in FoxNews Sunday – that Americans should rely more on their own initiatives instead of a large Government.

    The DG class is approximately 50% of the electorate. Women are 53% of the electorate but not all women are part of the DG. Another issue to address then is the Dems accusations of a GOP War on Women. This worked for the Dems in 2012 and must be countered in 2016 by the GOP. Again – question Carly first. She will answer in a very inspiring way how she realized the American Dream drawing on her talents, motivation, and persistent determination – a model all women should aspire to.

    Let us all responsibly send such questions into Fox for the next debate.

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